Mostly Beagles, Babies, and Books...

My mom finally made it in town this weekend to visit. She is an artist living in Mentone, Alabama. She works a lot and the drive is long, so she doesn’t make it down very often but we were glad she did.

I was joking with my mom about how she has never made the six-hour drive quicker than eight hours. She was bound and determined to prove me wrong this time and told me that she wasn’t even drinking water on the road so she wouldn’t have to stop for bathroom breaks. She was on track to get here in just five and a half hours. I was blown away by what good time she was making… and then I got a phonecall from her on the side of the road….

Broken alternator! Luckily, she was only 40 minutes North of Destin. She got a quick tow to the Niceville Pep Boys, and Carla May and I picked her up there. We have decided that she is just not meant to make the trip any faster.

After picking up “Granny Calamity” (her new grandma name – this changes on a regular basis, but this week she is “Granny Calamity,” a little long for a baby to say in my opinion, but I digress… where was I?)… after picking up mom from the auto repair shop, we had dinner at Ciao Bella in Niceville. “Granny Calamity” is vegetarian and Ciao Bella has great veggie pizza options!

While we were enjoying our pizzas and salads, our little bandit snatched up an entire loaf of bread from the center of the table to gnaw on. I swear this child would rather be eating than doing anything else, and I have yet to find a food that she will not eat.

We spent most of the weekend enjoying the beautiful weather at the Seascape in Miramar Beach. The water was so blue and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

I got a new 50 mm camera lens on Friday, so we played around with my camera and got some decent shots!

Carla May loves playing peek-a-boo and gets a kick out of anyone who peeks out from behind the camera, so it is pretty easy to get good photographs of her.

She is such an expressive baby and clearly shows her emotions on her face (she gets that from me – I do not have a good “poker face”). I am constantly cracking up at some of the looks she makes.

My mom had never been to a Whole Foods before, so we swung by there to pick up some of their empanadas and vegetables for lunch. They also had beautiful peonies, which are one of my favorite flowers, so I had to treat myself to those as well.

Mom and I ate lunch on the deck, soaked up the sun, and caught up with each other while Carla May was napping.

When Carla May woke up from her nap, we took a walk to Pompano Joe’s. I had pinned a towel across the top of CM’s stroller to keep the sun off of her, but the breeze picked up and kept blowing the towel around. She thought this was the funniest thing ever. Her belly laughs were the perfect soundtrack to me scrambling to keep her shaded as the towel whipped all over the place.

By the time we finally made it to the restaurant, the wind was blowing pretty hard. It’s only about a mile walk, but seemed much longer with the headwind. We had planned to have a cocktail and stick our feet in the sand, but decided instead to sit on the streetside porch with the building blocking the wind. Pompano Joe’s has all kinds of porch-sitting options.

Our walk back to the condo was quick with the tailwind. The rest of the weekend was spent making veggie spaghetti and relaxing.

The weather was beautiful, my mom made it down and back in one piece (although not in less than eight hours bahahaha), and we had a wonderful weekend visiting and catching up.